The greatest problem with the chiropractic profession as a whole is its lack of vision. We started off 100 years ago with a man like D.D. who had the vision to see something that no one else in the world had ever seen, the vertebral subluxation as an interference to the expression of life. Then his son, B.J., standing on his father’s shoulders had even greater vision. His vision included not only training chiropractors, but more important, what a subluxation-free world would be like. Stephenson, in his Chiropractic Textbook (the other chiropractic philosophy book), describes B.J.’s vision, “. . . a country or a world without sickness, insanity, blindness, feeble-minded people, deaf and dumb, backward children, social evils, criminality, drunkenness and its attendant evils, abnormal reproduction, etc. If Chiropractic were given a chance . . ., it could do much more than any other human agency has done or can do, in reducing the above named abnormalities to a minimum,” (p 336). We may think that B.J.’s vision is a little extreme but isn’t that what vision really is, being able to see clearly what others can not. The point is that B.J. had a vision for chiropractic.
Somewhere along the line most of the profession has lost its vision. A few at the extreme ends of the profession Still have some vision but that is all and neither of those visionaries have much of a following or much support for their vision. The vision of one extreme is to see the profession absorbed by medicine, much like the osteopathic profession in the middle of this century. That vision is abhorred by the rest of the profession. The other extreme, of which I admit to being a part, is largely ignored by the rest of the profession. Those in the middle, representing the majority, have no vision. However, they hide this lack of vision in noble and majestic terms like “subluxation based.” Subluxation based is not a vision. It is like using your hands to grope along because you cannot see. It is difficult to make any kind of real progress and you may well go off in the wrong direction. That is not vision. Correcting vertebral subluxations is not a vision. Vision is why you correct vertebral subluxation. But the vast, visionless majority does not want vision. Without it people can correct subluxations for whatever reason they want: to relieve pain, to cure disease, to get sick people well, to prevent disease, to make money and/or to correct the cause of disease or DIS-EASE. They even hope that they will attract those that have a vision to their subluxation-based chiropractic. You see subluxation based is not a philosophical position, it is a political idea. That is why it is being touted by one of the two major political organizations. It is not a way of giving vision or direction to the profession. It is a way of drawing together those that have no vision or have no direction or are willing to go in any direction just as long as they can be part of a group. It is a way of organizing people despite a lack of similar goals.
Graduating more students than any other college is also not a vision. There has to be a reason why we need or should put that many people into the profession. Are we not at all concerned about the many students who are defaulting on their student loans, giving the profession a black eye? What about the poor students who spend $80,000 to $100,000 or more for an education and because they were given no vision, end up wasting all that money as well as years of their lives?
It seems that some of this majority believe that supplanting medicine as the number one healing art is a vision. Perhaps in this case, I am without vision but I believe we will never do that and to think we will is not visionary, it is hallucinatory. The world has a love affair with instant gratification and instant relief and except for certain relatively uncomplicated musculoskeletal conditions, chiropractic does not ordinarily offer instant relief to the degree that we can compete with medicine. Even if we could, who wants to replace a system that is a loser. We need to replace the outside-in mentality not the medical system. Medicine is a loser, not because it uses drugs but because the treatment of disease or its cause is a losing proposition. Those within our profession who have not seen that by now, have not because they have no vision.
Some years back, I read an article about eyesight that theorized why so many people needed corrective lenses. The writer’s theory was that modern society has prevented us from looking great distances any more. In previous centuries, especially in rural areas, people lived miles apart. There was nothing to see for miles so you had to use your distance perception. Today, the majority of people live at most a few hundred feet apart. There is no need or even a possibility of looking for miles. His theory was that the physiological law of “use it or lose it” has caused us to lose the ability to see at a distance. I have no idea whether there is any truth to his theory. But I think the use it or lose it principle may apply with regard to the vision of our profession.
The traditional chiropractor has no vision. Traditions stifle vision. Tradition by definition is something passed on from generation to generation without any interest in change. B.J. was anything but a traditional chiropractor. He was constantly doing new things, stretching people’s vision (and offending quite a few people in the process). The NCM was visionary. So was HIO. Before both of them was x-ray which is an accepted procedure in our profession today but visionary at the time. I believe if B.J. were alive today, he would be aghast at the people who have camped at his graveside. (How’s that for a non sequitur sentence? But you get the point.) The greatest deterrent to advancement in chiropractic is the traditional approach because it keeps people in the middle. The middle, unfortunately, is no-man’s land where “we are not medicine but we are not different,” “we do not treat disease but we get sick people well,” “we do not treat symptoms but correct their cause.” Talk about non sequiturs. At least the medical-embracing chiropractor has a direction and a vision. It might be the wrong one but it is at least a vision. The traditional chiropractor has none.
The world is changing and the profession’s perception of what chiropractic is and what it does must change also. The objective straight chiropractor has a vision. It’s worth investigating.v13n2